"He's as Dead as I am Old"

Ahem... that's a quote from the inadequately reverential Beck. Missed this by a day, but 30 years ago Elvis Presley died. While our lives did not overlap, I think it's fairly obvious that my style is highly derivate of his. A-uh-huh. Yeah. Hey-yay. Uh. And yet, I was alive last year, and I did not manage to make 42 million dollars. My bad.

Beck also managed to conjure up some interesting (and thoroughly unrelated, unless you like to think of that 50,000 Elvis Fans Album Cover or Andy Warhol prints or something, in which case it's thoroughly related) while we were watching the second half of the Weeds season 2, when she tossed out during the intro song: "I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing." For those out of the know (and/or those who aren't Aaron and don't spend 90% of their disposable income devouring the pop culture landscape ion DVD form), here's the intro to Weeds:

The song is called "Little Boxes," and this is the version by its writer, Malvina Reynolds (tidbit: a different version performed by the Womenfolk in 1963 clocked in at 1:03 and is the shortest song to break into the Billboard Top 100 (albeit at 83)). Here are the lyrics for your edification:

"LITTLE BOXES"

Little boxes on the hill side, little boxes made of ticky tacky.
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow
one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just
the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes, little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and there's business
executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just
the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow
one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just
the same.

Not exactly a hearty endorsement of the suburban post-war baby-booming lifestyle. And so I bring up that it's interesting that Beck questions whether it's a "good thing or a bad thing" is because it is a very knee-jerk, faux hipster cynical thing to decry the suburban nightmare as an "obvious terrible thing" and eschew further discussion - your basic open-mindedness-only full-circle conservatism that Beck here dodges gracefully. The show itself almost assumes this intrinsic vilification on face and makes no attempts to hide it. Not that it should - behind the implicit comedy in its "mom deals drugs" plotline is a landscape dotted with biting satire of upper-middle-class bourgeois values, and it pulls these off with a relative mastery. But it's always good, though not necessarily time-efficient, to question the underlying values on a base level, even if the values here being questioned are the ones that ostensibly question values themselves all the time. Is conformity necessarily the soul-crushing evil alleged here? Is that pragmatic trade of safety and financial responsibility for the authentically lived life a bad one, or does it come with its trappings of positive community that outweigh the fringe-y, on your own terms existence?

Important considerations for the near thirty and their borderline mindless pursuit of cars, houses, careers and such.